Exit Wounds
by RacketGhost
Summary: "At least they were together for a time," Crowley says, staring at the lit end of his cigarette, "maybe that's enough."


_Notes:_ This is part of a larger story arc happening over on AO3 which I cannot upload here due to the explicit content. If you wish to read the continuation, head over to AO3 and search for my name Racketghost

also: you can come talk to me on Tumblr .com

* * *

_Verdun, France, winter 1916_

* * *

_Is this what Hell is like? _

He hears men whispering this to each other within the concrete bulwarks of the fort, in the trenches, in the medic tents. The words follow him down hallways and across killing fields and into foxholes.

_Is this what Hell is like?_

_This is worse_, Crowley thinks, keeping the thought to himself, locked away. _This is so much worse_.

He is standing at the mouth of a great concrete tunnel— the entryway to a hundred little spiderweb passages, winding in, and out, and down. The fort is a metal and stone animal of armories and munitions, medical bays and cafeterias, barracks and look-outs. From here he can see a vast pock-marked expanse— miles of indented earth that has been etched by the endless fire of artillery shells. An almanac of human destructive force. It is quiet now, nearly night, and there is a cold, wet wind dividing the air.

He shivers. _Why am I always so fucking cold_, he thinks. It is February, or maybe March, and the sun has not yet kissed France with its warmth. There is nothing here but heavy, snowy wind and the pale bodies of men heaped in abstract sculptures where they died; thrown on the bonnets of hills, sinking in the divots of trenches, great scallop-edged scars in the earth. The wind blows over their vanished identities, over puddles that are more poison gas and blood than rainwater and the smell of death arrives at Crowley's feet.

_So much worse than Hell_.

Crowley has never liked the cold. Heat he could handle. Heat he craved. He was born of it. Cut his demonic teeth on burning brimstone and hellfire and boiling sulphuric lakes. But not this creeping chill— the kind of solemn cold that lays like a damp coverlet over your bones and ices your organs. He hasn't felt warmth in what feels like a millennia; not since that bright day in the park, throwing crumbs to the ducks, wearing worsted woolen suits and tall hats and gloves— every inch of him covered. Every inch of him feeling exposed. _Was that the last time?_ He thinks, remembering the sun on his face, the ambient internal glow of the divine being next to him, remembering it all going to pieces, remembering the sudden loss of heat, a candle extinguishing.

He fumbles around in his pocket, finds a cigarette. One of the men in the trenches had given it to him as he lay there, lungs melting inside of him, drowning on dry land. He had pressed his carton of cigarettes into Crowley's hand and a letter for his girl into the other and looked at him, nodding in encouragement, as if Crowley was the one in need of reassurance. _It's ok, take it, give this to my girl, I'll be ok, this is over now_. There was a numbness then, a sort of encompassing stillness where he couldn't feel his heart beating or feel the cold air on his face, or even see much else besides the paper carton crunched in his fist and the envelope clutched tightly in his hand. He was meant to tempt the man- _boy, really_, he thinks, remembering back to the kid's sun-bright hair and steely blue eyes— away from his post, leave a gap in the line, perhaps entice him with the promise of warmth and good food and shelter.

But the boy's chest had caught a bullet, probably somewhere in the lungs. Maybe if Crowley hadn't approached he never would have moved and never would have gotten shot and maybe if Crowley had been a little bit earlier, a little bit swifter in his temptation the kid wouldn't have been there at all. A bullet flying through empty air, stopping in the sandbags, delivering nothing.

Crowley sways where he stands, hears the sound of a thousand artillery shells an hour in his head, remembers this field a few hours ago, and something inside of him, some tiny bit of belief that everything would always be ok, always be the same, always be safe, splinters loose.

He is an immortal being. He has no inherent understanding of human life or the fragility of it. No reference point for mortality. He understands it in the abstract— a sudden mathematical equation: only so many beats in a human heart, only so many circuits of blood on the circulatory loop, only so many inhales, exhales, electrical pulses before they expire. But he is learning the stakes of being human, learning.

He has been witness to war before— skirmishes in deep forests, men half naked and painted, more animal than human, bearing blunt instruments of destruction; he has seen thousands of Persians square off against Greek hoplites in their phalanxes, like armored beetles; saw the great Macedonian battles across endless expanses of desert, felt the heat, saw the carnage. But none of that feels like this. _The Book of Revelation has nothing on this_.

_Is this what Hell is like?_

He summons up a spark of hellfire and lights the cigarette between his teeth. Sucks in a shaky breath. _This feels like end times_, he thinks. But it can't be. There's been no signal from Below. No Antichrist. This is purely human, he understands, even if it doesn't feel like it. _Not yet_. But here on the killing fields where the craters of canon blasts make a moon-scape filled with blood and rain and poison gas he can start to feel it— the slippery edge of panic that this thing called life might not persist forever.

Another gust blows in, spraying him with a fine mist of rainwater and another shiver runs down his spine. He is cold, and wet, and he feels around the shell of his ear to the back of his neck where a bullet had grazed him earlier. His hand finds a soft spot, wet and sticky, and when he draws back his hand finds it mottled with red.

He stares at it with wonder, with detached disbelief. He rubs his fingers together and watches his own blood spread between them like paint.

There isn't much of him that is left clean— his slate-pale uniform is more hole than fabric, more mud than blue. Camouflage splotches of red speckle him like an egg. Some of the blood is his, he supposes, and some of it is not. He could miracle it all away, could burn himself clean, could manifest new clothes straight from the firmament, but he doesn't— simply because he cannot find it within himself to care.

There is a growing red bloom forming on his upper left arm, near the shoulder, and he sucks in another long drag of the cigarette, feeling nothing.

* * *

Crowley knew he would be here. He knew it by the sudden warmth he felt one morning, like the sun was shining on his face again after a long time in the dark, by the tilt shift of gravity, his world moving again beneath his feet. It had been a long time— _54 blasted years_— not that he's been counting, since he has seen the angel. He slept through most of it. But even after 54 years he can still taste the bitterness in the back of his throat, can feel the bile rising there. _Fraternizing. _As if that's all that a millennia of friendship could be distilled down to. _Is that all it was to you?_

He thinks about meetings under an endless canopy of stars in an ancient desert, about wine-drunk musings while temple dancers shook the ground under their feet, about painting hieroglyphs together in heretical halls— he thinks of sharing oysters in stone houses in Rome, about the swell of bodies pushing closer, closer, to the stage of the funny little thing called theater that Aziraphale loves so much.

_Who'd have thought that immortality would be so lonely_, he thinks.

"There now, everything will be better."

Crowley leans against the doorframe to the med bay, watching the soldier laying on the gurney with a sort of detached envy. To be that man, supplicant and vulnerable, spread out and open and willing under the deft healing touch of another. Organs on display. Heart out of chest. There was no shame there, no deep wells of fear, of caution, of being found out. It was so…_ human_.

Aziraphale is a paper-doll cut-out of a figure standing between the rows of cots in his pristine white jacket, drifting between them like a ghost. His snow-tuft hair white-gold against the grey rampart walls behind him, a single lightbulb sputtering above. His square fingers hover over the wounds of sleeping men, stitching together lacerations, bones shifting into place.

Crowley waits for him to notice him.

_Don't you feel me? I could feel you the instant you stepped foot in France. Like someone lit a candle in the corner of a dark room._

But Aziraphale does not turn and Crowley waits, watches, recognizes the small swift steps and delicate hand movements with a gut-kick of nostalgia. He _knows_ those hands. Has seen them fold playbills and pluck grapes, light candles, shuck oysters.

Those hands look as at home here as they do turning pages in a book: reverent, kind, precise.

_Divine_, Crowley thinks.

"Looks like you have your work cut out for you, angel."

Aziraphale's pale head lifts but does not turn around. The lightbulb above dims and flickers and Crowley does not know if he did it or Aziraphale or if it was just the dodgy electrical wiring in this dank drippy fort.

"Crowley."

It is said like a whisper, like a relief. _I guess you can't feel me. Not here. Maybe not ever. Another dark thing in a dark place. _

And then a beat later, "you're here."

_Where else would I be? I always find my way back to you don't you know this by now? _

Crowley pushes off of the doorframe, thumbing the edge of the solder's letter in his pocket. Feeling, all at once, a great swell of jealousy towards humans and their uncomplicated emotions, their ability to just feel and feel and feel and let it all out, bring it all in.

"Is that a disappointment?" He tries to keep his voice light, teasing, but there was nothing behind it, no mirth.

Crowley watches Aziraphale's shoulders rise, his head tilt, watches the hands dig into fists at his sides for just the briefest moment. And then suddenly he is straightening, pulling down the hem of his jacket and brushing at the front of it, silent tantrum concluded. He turns his head then and Crowley can see the up-turned nose, the sky-bright blue of his eye as he peers at him over his shoulder.

"It's been quite a while, hasn't it?" He says, ignoring Crowley's poor attempt at teasing.

The corner of his mouth that Crowley can see lifts slightly.

"I suppose it has."

Crowley backs into the furthest cot against a wall until his thighs kiss the edge of it, his hands gripping onto the ledge hard enough to leave indents in his palm. _Why is it always so easy with you and so difficult with you all at once? Here we are doing the same old dance. We know the steps by heart. _

He can hear Aziraphale swallow, watches the brush of his white hair against the collar of his jacket.

"Why are you here? Don't tell me _any_ of this is your lot's work."

"It's not," Crowley starts, then glances away, "well, mostly not. I didn't realize giving Ferdinand's driver incorrect directions was going to result in a war."

Aziraphale turns fully to look at him.

"_You _are the reason he was outside that blasted café?"

Crowley shrugs, looking anywhere but at Aziraphale, remembering Sarajevo and how he went there to get the hell away from London.

"I was going to just reroute the motorcade, maybe have an apple cart tip over in the street and cause a big scene where they had to turn around and all the heads of state would be irritated for the rest of the day. You know, maybe sign in some stupid laws about street vendors that would cause low level annoyances for the next few years. I didn't expect some stupid kid to be consoling himself after his failed assassination attempt with a bloody sandwich."

Crowley is plucking absently at the blanket he is sitting on, suddenly embarrassed, still numb, still not sure what his place was in all of this. He was a shitty demon, really— doing Aziraphale's miracles half the time and the other half conjuring up petty annoyances that didn't exactly fill Hell's coffer with immortal souls. _This wasn't how this was supposed to go, _he thinks, heart beating madly. _I haven't seen you in 54 years and _this_ is what you want to talk about? _

"I certainly didn't expect _this." _ _I really didn't. _

It hit him then— all the numbness and all the detachment evaporated and in its place was a thousand years of regret, of obligation to do the wrong thing even when he wanted to do the right. He wasn't built for this, wasn't built to manufacture death and destruction. He was built to manufacture stars, cosmos, spinning nebula. Not death, not disease, not _war._ He could feel the weight of it in his bones, in his blood. Could feel a chill in his heart he could not shake.

He bends, crumpled in half, his snake spine and snake neck rolling forward until he is folded in half like a book, closed. His hands weave through hair like burnished copper and _pull_.

_It is an odd thing_, he thinks, remotely, his mind hovering somewhere above his body, _to be this vulnerable in front of another_. He inhales, exhales, drawing cold stale air into his lungs until he feels like he is almost drowning, remembering the young soldier he knelt beside— _I'll be ok, this is over now_— and then _give this to my girl— _Crowley didn't even know this man— had only met him to tempt him— and then a moment later he was gasping in his arms, _the most vulnerable_, Crowley thinks, a little wildly, and consoling this odd bespectacled stranger and giving him a letter for the love he was leaving behind.

_How did they do this? _He wonders, his consciousness fraying. How did they let everything out so easily, just pour out their inner-most selves to anyone who would listen? Their hearts just there, on a plate, beating in plain view. He and Aziraphale just squared off around each other at an arm's length even after centuries, orbiting each other like strange moons, drawing close at times and away at others, gravity holding them together.

_He's the immoveable planet, _Crowley thinks, remembering how it feels to build such a thing. _I'm just the burnt chunk of rock spinning around him, in and out with the tides._

"You're bleeding."

It was a simple affirmative statement, nothing to respond to. Crowley was teetering away, spiraling under a billion regrets, light-years of things unsaid. _In more ways than one, angel. _

"N— Don't feel it," he mutters, head still cradled in his hands and fingers ripping at his hair, bordering on hurt. At least it _felt _like something, even if it was pain.

"And your neck! Crowley—"

He could feel the angel step closer, could see his feet from where Crowley stared at the floor, his small gate and quick steps.

"Ss'fine, angel," He hisses, forgetting himself, his tongue lingering between his teeth.

"It's not _fine_. You clearly came to the medical ward seeking treatment and I'm— we—" Aziraphale huffs in a little breath, exasperated with himself or Crowley or the situation, he wasn't quite sure.

"Come, sit up now."

A cart wheels into Crowley's view of the ground and then there is a soft hand at his shoulder.

The touch seems to seer through Crowley's woolen jacket and a small piece of him, the optimistic piece, thaws slightly.

He obeys, releasing his hair and rolling back up until he is suddenly eye level with Aziraphale. He is very, very close, and Crowley's heart does a strange sort of jump at the proximity. They lock eyes for just a moment and then Aziraphale looks away, clears his throat.

_I've missed you. _

The thought burns hot in Crowley's head before he has the chance to stomp it out.

Aziraphale is fretting at the wound on his neck, standing on tip toes to get a better look. Crowley obliges him and bends a bit, pulling back at his collar.

"It's just a graze. Something nicked me when I was out in the field."

"You should never have been out there," Aziraphale scolds, hands flexing. Crowley knows he is itching to wave his hand and heal it in an instant— but they had tried that once before when Crowley had gotten thrown from a horse in the 14th century and the ensuing burn of holy energy had left him curled into a ball for the better part of a week.

"You could have been discorporated, Crowley, really. You have to be more careful. These humans have thought up such new terrors. Just the other day I saw a man wounded with a serrated blade. Like a _bread knife! _The gangrene had already set in and it was impossible to stitch up. It's _monstrous_ what they're thinking up these days."

He lets the angel prattle on as a pad is pressed to his neck, cleans away the blood there.

"And we thought the French Revolution was bad," Crowley mutters.

"I'm more worried about whatever is causing this stain on your arm," the angel eyes his uniform, concerned. "Were you shot?"

Crowley turns his head under Aziraphale's hand to look at his shoulder, his mouth close enough to Aziraphale's wrist that his snake tongue can taste the soft warmth of his skin. He swallows.

"Nh— got sliced up by some barbed wire or something. But it's been a few hours. Doesn't feel like much." _Because truthfully angel, I haven't been feeling much of anything. _

He can see Aziraphale swallow, knows that the gears in his head must be spinning, "Well, can you take off your uniform? I'd like to have a look at it. You do _not_ want to get gangrene."

"Can occult beings even _get _gangrene?" Crowley asks, already unbuttoning the stiff collar of his jacket. He hisses in a breath as he bends his arm. _I guess it does hurt_, he muses.

"Oh, let me—" Their fingers brush as Aziraphale lifts his hand to help. Crowley can feel a pulse of warmth, like electric heat, from the point of contact.

Crowley drops his hands and he lets himself be unbuttoned. There is a strange remembered intimacy between them— an ease with which Aziraphale undresses him as if it is the most natural thing in the world, as if he's done it before. Crowley has never been more aware of his own skin— of those points of contact where fabric lays against him. He is trying very hard to not stare at Aziraphale's manicured fingers working the buttons on his jacket, moving down, down, until they are practically in his lap, brushing against his trousers. So he stares forward, at the angel's slightly parted lips, the stubborn chin, the strong column of his throat, the slightly oversized ears. And then the angel is pushing the heavy wet fabric off his shoulders, a weight off his back, all business, and Crowley sits there in his muddied and bloodied undershirt, exposed.

His mouth is fantastically dry.

"Thankss," he mutters, cursing the incidental hiss.

But if Aziraphale hears him he does not respond, instead gazing intently at his arm, near the junction of shoulder and bicep.

"You _have _to be more careful," the angel scolds again, repeating himself quietly, almost to himself. "Something terrible could have happened to you. There are cannon blasts every half second out there." He is muttering quietly, almost impossible for Crowley to hear.

Aziraphale furrows his brow, presses a wet cloth experimentally to the wound and begins cleaning. The angel's eyes are the pure blue of an unclouded summer sky, even here in this dank fort, even through Crowley's tinted lenses. The heat pouring off of him is magnetic, like pure unfiltered sunshine.

He blinks slowly, watching the angel's movements, feeling wholly unconnected to his body. _Am I hallucinating? _He thinks, swaying slightly on the table. He is experiencing the entire moment as if suspended from above the room— looking down on himself. He is distantly aware of the press of Aziraphale's hand on his arm, aware that whatever he is cleaning him with has a strong medicinal scent and burns slightly, aware that it is _freezing_ in this cave of a room, and aware that none of it, with Aziraphale this close, particularly matters.

"This is bleeding rather a lot. You've probably lost a good amount of blood."

Aziraphale leans closer, eyes the slow seep of the wound. He presses his fingers around, palpating, and Crowley sucks in air through his teeth.

"No sign of infection—"

"—which we probably can't even _get_—"

Aziraphale continues, not listening, "I'm going to have to stitch it. Pity I can't just…" he squeezes a bit and Crowley straightens, nearly rips his arm out of Aziraphale's hands.

"_No._ I was laid up for nearly a week the last time you tried that."

Aziraphale rolls his eyes a bit, sucks on his front teeth, "it couldn't have been _that_ bad—"

"—It was worse than whatever the horse did to me," Crowley interrupts.

"I barely even _healed _you, it was just a touch up! Or maybe—"

The angel takes a step back and looks perceptively at Crowley's hand.

Crowley licks his dry lips, "yeah," he says, "worth a shot." And then presses a single finger to the wound.

There's an audible intake of breath, a sudden flash of warmth and heat and maybe the barest hint of sulphur as Crowley summons up a line of hellfire. It blazes hot for an instant and the broken skin beneath it seals shut— healed, in a sense. He drops his hand, sucking in a pained breath.

"Wow," he breathes, "that was awful."

"Amazingly affective," Aziraphale murmurs, always a scholar, leaning close to view the cauterization.

"Hurts like hell though."

"I suppose that's fitting, really," Aziraphale says to his arm. "And the skin surrounding it isn't even scorched!"

"Some demonic miracle, huh?"

"You know, I always wondered what would happen if you did that to yourself." Aziraphale is still talking excitedly into his shoulder.

"Glad I could enlighten you."

His arm hurts more now than it did before and Crowley stares up at the ceiling, trying very hard to ignore the warmth that blossoms under his skin every time Aziraphale touches him. _It is so much easier to just be numb. Why can't I just cauterize the whole damned mess of me. Sear my heart straight out of my chest. _He becomes distantly aware that Aziraphale is speaking again.

"…I know _you_ don't value your existence but I'm telling you that _someone _might and it would be very inconvenient for anything to happen to this body you inhabit. You've had it for millennia! And the _paperwork_."

Crowley blinks, levels his gaze at Aziraphale.

"Demons aren't quite the type to be missed, are they?"

The hand wrapped around his bicep grips him momentarily more tightly, then loosens, then disappears.

"I'm not saying _demon_, Crowley. I'm saying _you."_

"One and the same, aren't they? I doubt anyone would notice."

There is an almost imperceptible shift in the way the air moves around them, a sudden stillness.

"But I thought you had plenty of others you _fraternize_ with."

The air between them grows thick, tense, highly electric. Crowley can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise up and his throat tighten. His eyes burn back a sudden welling of tears and he blinks them away, angry.

"I—" he starts, his throat not cooperating in the least. "I do," he finishes, lamely.

Aziraphale ignores him, wrapping dressings around the raw skin on his arm somewhat more tightly than was necessary. Crowley looks the other way, desperate, wishing one of the men on the cots in front of them would cry out and distract Aziraphale and he could make a break for it back to the front lines— he'd rather brave a barrage of bullets than a spiteful angel. _So it did mean something to you_.

But the silence is broken only by a few distant pops of gunfire and the steady dripping of rainwater coming through leaky walls. The angel turns away from him, throwing the blood soaked cleaning rags into a metal bowl.

Crowley twists to gather his uniform, holds up his bloodied jacket, ready to shrug back into it.

"You are _not_ going to put that back on, are you?" Aziraphale looks mildly scandalized at the thought.

"I was considering it."

"_Please, _for God's sake get a new one. Or better yet, just… get out of here. Go back to London, or better yet America."

_You want me gone already, do you? After all these years?_

Crowley tongues his incisors, feeling for fangs, feeling suddenly venomous, his hands itching to do something. He digs around in the pocket of his trousers and pulls out the cigarette carton, the soldier's letter falling on the floor between them.

"Oh. What is—?"

Crowley ignores him, lights the cigarette, sucks in a deep breath. He was beginning to understand why humans loved tobacco so much.

The glow of hellfire turns Aziraphale's hair red as he bends to retrieve the letter. Crowley stares at the fair head, hair the color of flames for just a second, so much like his, and swallows, reminded of the stakes between them, feeling a sliver of panic rise in his throat.

"Oh," Aziraphale lifts a hand up his mouth, covers it softly.

"Yeah," Crowley says, "_oh._" He exhales a line of smoke into the ceiling.

"A young man gave this to you? For his…?"

"Wife, yeah."

"You knew him?"

Crowley exhales a line of smoke, "briefly."

"Is it… do you suppose it's very wrong of me to read it?"

Crowley lifts a shoulder. "I read it. But perhaps that means you shouldn't."

Aziraphale ignores him, his book-hungry fingers at home here on paper, on written words, unable to resist. "It can't hurt, can it?" He is already opening it, not waiting for a response.

"'My darling, if this should ever reach you it will be a sure sign that I am gone under. You have been the best of wives and I loved you deeply, how much you will never know," Aziraphale's voice was soft, reverent, the words barely audible. "So dear heart I will bid you farewell hoping to meet you in the time to come if there is a hereafter. Know that my last thoughts were of you, the only one I ever loved, the one that made a man of me."

Aziraphale folds the letter like it is something sacred, stares down into the space between them.

"Somewhere in the world there is a woman who has no idea that her husband is gone. She's just going on living, not knowing," He says quietly. "You know I think that's the worst part of the whole thing." He turns his head and stares out across the rows of cots beyond them, to the few men sleeping there.

"At least they were together for a time," Crowley says, staring at the lit end of his cigarette. "Maybe that's enough."

Crowley can feel more than see the pure holy blue of Aziraphale's eyes as he turns to look at him.

"_Life_ alone is the most sacred gift, Crowley."

There is a frightening element to Aziraphale's voice— a promise of power, of knowledge, and Crowley reminds himself that Aziraphale isn't just an angel, he is a _principality_— one of God's chosen protectors of all Her creation. Of course he would see _life_ as the most important element— no matter how unfulfilled or terrible or painful that life was. Just existing was enough.

"Well sorry to disagree with you, angel. But a life without certain… _elements_ isn't much of a gift." Crowley thinks of the men in the trenches with their lack of food and shell-shocked faces that have forgotten what warm beds and warm bodies feel like.

"That would be the, ah, _pleasures of the flesh_ you demons are so fond of, then?" Aziraphale looks down at him primly, gaze lingering on the cigarette.

And Crowley cannot help the laugh he barks out at the idea of Aziraphale, angel of the eastern gate and principality of all that is food and comfort scolding _him_ on earthly pleasures.

"I'm sorry angel but honestly, you are the king regent of _pleasures of the flesh_."

Aziraphale does a bit of an uncomfortable wiggle and then takes the cigarette from Crowley's fingers.

"If I am to guide these humans through their mortal life I believe it's best that I… understand their temptations." He arches an eyebrow in challenge at Crowley and then raises the cigarette to his lips.

Crowley's mouth goes dry as he watches Aziraphale's lips wrap around the cigarette like it's something obscene. _And it is, a bit,_ he thinks— the angel always had a penchant for enjoying the ever-living fuck out of whatever pleasure he was occupying himself with at the moment and the result could be downright pornographic. _The bloody hedonist doesn't even have the self-awareness to feel shame. _

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Crowley mutters, still staring at the junction of lips on paper.

Aziraphale pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and puffs perfect circles over his shoulder.

"Dear boy you _know_ I don't sleep."

_Why am I so infatuated with this ridiculous creature?_ Crowley wonders, feeling very tired and very dirty and very cold but willing, _always _willing to spend any number of uncomfortable minutes to be around this soft absurd being.

"Is that what you've been up to? Sleeping?" Aziraphale asks, staring at the lit end of the paper in his hand, "Since we last... spoke?"

"Something like that," Crowley answers, looking out over the men sleeping at the far end of the room. "What have you been… occupying your time with?"

"Well with just my own miracles to do and no temptations to speak of… I picked up a few hobbies."

The angel looks oddly pleased with himself and Crowley gets the distinct idea that he will not enjoy one bit of what is about to come next.

But, curiosity and all.

"_Hobbies_," Crowley repeats.

"Perhaps I could show you? Somewhere a bit more…" Aziraphale licks his lips, looks around the medical bay, "comfortable?"

Crowley rubs a weary hand across his face. It has been a spectacularly long day, and he is tired, and _cold_, and Aziraphale was never very good at realizing how extremely flirtatious he could seem and what a number it did to the nerves of one very emotionally frayed demon.

"Of course, angel. Somewhere more comfortable. Preferably somewhere with massive quantities of alcohol."

* * *

Aziraphale's quarters are a small square room near the medical offices. The angel has somehow managed to squeeze an entire bookshelf into one corner and a worn looking sofa into the other and if any visiting humans were to comment on the lack of bed they would simply find themselves misdirected to the commissary on an errand for sweets with no clue as to _why_.

It reminded Crowley of their time in Wessex. Those waxed canvas tents with a brazier always burning and Aziraphale's horde of books and manuscripts kept pristine in even the most damp of conditions. He wonders how many miracles the angel performed to spare his precious things the slow spread of mildew and curling pages.

"I'm afraid there isn't a wine bottle to be found around here, but I do have a bit of very good brandy. And if that isn't your taste there's also a bottle of rather fine bourbon one of the American volunteers left behind."

"Whichever you prefer." Crowley falls more than sits into the sofa— his legs and arms at odd angles to each other, a collapsed triangle. "I'd drink rubbing alcohol at this point."

"Take this, and I don't want to hear another word."

Crowley is rubbing his face when a hand is thrust in front of him, holding a pale shirt. He reaches out and takes it, equal parts ashamed and exhilarated. _He wants me to wear his clothes?_

"Sure, sorry," he mutters, _no he probably doesn't want me getting blood or mud or whatever else you're filthy with on his couch. _He strips off his undershirt and shrugs into the garment as quickly as possible. _As if he hasn't just spent the last hour with his hands all over you. _

He tries very hard not to bury his face into the fabric and inhale. But the shirt is soft and oddly warm and smells like Aziraphale; like sunshine on a lavender field, like the warm air blowing out of a bakery oven, vanilla and sugar. It feels like a hundred warm hands cupping his skin.

"Not quite my color, is it?" He says, plucking at the fabric over his chest.

Aziraphale hands him a glass and tilts his head, considering the ruffled looking demon spread out on his sofa. All sharp angles and a smudge of bright copper hair, a bit of mud still plastered to one high cheekbone, exhaustion etched into every shadow.

"You know I rather think it suits you."

If Aziraphale sees the blush that colors Crowley's cheeks he does not mention it, and instead plops down next to him.

"So," Crowley begins, clearing his throat, "you were saying something about hobbies?"

Aziraphale's eyes light up, "Oh _yes_. May I demonstrate?"

Crowley cocks an eyebrow at the strange pale creature next to him, all sunshine and smile, as if there aren't gunshots in the distance, as if he wasn't just up to his wrists in battle wounds.

"By all means."

Aziraphale pulls up his sleeves just a bit, shows Crowley his bare hands, and then without hesitating is suddenly very, _very_ close to his ear. Crowley can hear a metallic tinkling and then Aziraphale is pulling back with a flourish, his eyes wide and proud and brandishing a coin.

"Wa-la!"

Crowley blinks between the coin and Aziraphale's face. He opens his mouth, shuts it, opens it again.

"What… just happened."

"_Magic!" _Aziraphale says excitedly, with all the enthusiasm of a child showing off a new toy. "Legerdemain!"

"You… learned _sleight of hand_?" Crowley isn't sure what he was expecting but it definitely wasn't magic.

"_Yes!_ I had the opportunity to learn stage magic from the fabulous John Maskelyne. Oh _Crowley_ he was darling. So patient and thorough. It was all the rage before this bloody war broke out. Sometimes I do tricks for the men convalescing."

Crowley picks up his drink and downs it in one gulp.

"Aziraphale," he coughs, "You… You're an _angel_. You can do _actual miracles_. I don't understand…" Crowley shakes his head, at a loss.

Aziraphale rolls his eyes, exasperated. "But this is _fun_. Actually using these bodies we have to their fullest potential is… enjoyable. Feels a bit like exploring an entirely new side of life." The angel is beaming at him, full of a intense wriggling energy, undeterred by Crowley's lack of enthusiasm.

"Ok… I need more alcohol." Crowley pours himself another shot.

"I call this one, the Elevator Card!" Aziraphale is shuffling a deck of cards and then looking expectantly at Crowley. "Now watch!" He pulls a card from the deck without looking, the 7 of hearts, shows it to the room as if there is an audience there, and then places it back in the deck. He shuffles, somewhat terribly.

"And now…_ behold! _The card I placed in the middle of the deck has now magically appeared on top!" The angel taps the top of the deck and then lifts the first card.

It's a queen of diamonds.

Crowley takes a drink.

"Was _this_ your card?" Aziraphale asks, beaming.

"Oh," Crowley looks between the angel and the card, "er… yes, yes of course it's my card."

The ensuing grin the angel gives him draws a returning smile out of the corner of Crowley's mouth as well. _You're seven kinds of ridiculous, angel. _He stares at Aziraphale fumbling with the deck of cards again, _Don't ever change._

As soon as the thought enters his mind his heart does a strange backflip in his chest. He can imagine Aziraphale's wings burning dark, the ebony char a stain he would never wash out, the blue eyes fading to black. He closes his eyes, scrunching them up tight behind his glasses. _This is dangerous, _he reminds himself, _I shouldn't stay much longer_, _probably should've gone by now. _

"Crowley?"

He inhales, exhales, finds himself breathing in the smell of Aziraphale's shirt, all clean linen and warm bread, finds himself again between the respirations- frayed and cold but thawing, thawing. He has a spectacular headache blooming between his eyes and he looks around, to the angel on the couch next to him and to the door locked across the room. Slowly, feeling somehow more naked than he did when being undressed, he takes off his glasses.

He doesn't need light to see well, but the brightness of the room is still a shock. He blinks, pupils constricting into tight slits.

Crowley has never felt comfortable with his eyes, the reptilian coldness of them. He rarely looks at himself in a mirror without lenses on, never stares into shiny storefronts if he can help it. The great coiled mess of himself is rather repulsive, no matter how he dresses it up in sharp black clothes, covers it with perfume, hides it behind spectacles.

It took a while after Eden to realize how he looked— all hellfire hair and brimstone eyes, pale and whipcord lean. As if he was assembled from broken glass. All edges and angles. Aziraphale was nothing but soft curves, not a hard line to him, pale eyes and mischievous little nose and white cloud-tuft hair that was never styled, just a jumbled pouf of unstructured loveliness.

When he looks up, Aziraphale is looking back at him, and says absolutely nothing about his eyes— as if they are unremarkable, normal, indifferent to his own. Crowley softens, a chunk of the iceberg in his chest falling off a cliff into the ocean of his body, gone, and feels, finally, _safe_.

"Yes, angel?"

"Did you… mean to find me here?"

The question has been hovering between them for hours, like some sort of persistent insect or layer of cloud-cover— but Crowley figured it would just get swept away, like all the other untidy emotions and untidy questions between them.

"I'm not entirely sure," he admits, truthful. "I was given an assignment to tempt certain men from their posts… didn't know you were going to be here until I saw you in the infirmary." The lie comes easily. _I know where you are like the moon knows where the earth is. I don't exist unless it's within your reach. _

"Oh," Aziraphale is studying a playing card in his hand. "I thought perhaps you came to start up the Arrangement again."

Crowley is a bit floored. _Is this a test? I don't have the right answers, angel. I never have._

"I would be… amenable to that," Crowley ventures.

"It's just that it's been fifty-some odd years, so I thought that perhaps you no longer needed my part in it." Aziraphale looks very still and not at all like his usual wiggly self. He is leaning back, holding the card in one hand and his drink in the other and Crowley cannot begin to understand what has changed his demeanor.

"No, I… I do. I mean, it would make things much easier on us both, I think? To go back to the way things were?"

It is quiet in the room for what seems to Crowley like an eternity. He is about to start rambling, probably incoherently, about the pros of starting up their arrangement again. Something about logistics and maybe ease of travel (especially during wartime), and perhaps even mention some meeting places that would be agreeable to the angel. But as Crowley opens his mouth to surely make a fool of himself Aziraphale begins to speak:

"We've been… enemies for nearly 6,000 years."

Crowley shuts his mouth with a snap.

"Have we?" He says faintly.

"I've known the other angels for that long, of course," Aziraphale is speaking directly to the card he is holding. "But I wouldn't be able to say that I particularly… _like_ any of them."

Crowley shrugs, scrunching up his nose, "I don't blame you. That Michael is a wanker."

"I _should_ like them. I really should. …But I don't."

"I wouldn't take it to heart, angel. I don't _like_ any of the demons I work with. And if there's something I've learned about humans it's that they don't particularly like the other humans they are forced to work with either." Crowley leans back into the couch, a capital Z of elbows and knees.

"It's not even that I don't like them. I don't feel _anything_ towards them. Apathy, I guess."

_I could tell you a thing or two about feeling nothing, angel. _

Crowley stares down into the empty glass in his hand, at the kaleidoscopic view of the couch beneath it.

"Do you _need_ to feel something towards them? Apathy is better than blind hatred I should think." Crowley thinks about Hastur and curls his lip, _now there's blind hatred._

"But I feel a great…" Aziraphale continues as if he hasn't heard Crowley. "A great something for—" He snaps out of whatever reverie he was falling into and sits stock upright, suddenly stern and spits out: "Promise me you won't go seeking out Holy Water."

"Ngk," says Crowley. "I—"

"Promise me."

He has been disarmed by the angel for what feels like the hundredth time in just one night.

"I… I can't promise you that."

The words feel like they are being ripped out of his throat. He would love for all the world to be able to lie to him about this. He lies to Aziraphale regularly, with ease, but small lies. Little lies. Lies to protect him, to comfort him, to keep him safe and close by. Aziraphale doesn't need to know that Crowley knew he was at Verdun-sur-Meuse, doesn't need to know that he pulled the wrong card in his card trick, doesn't need to know what will happen to him if the devils in Hell realize he's entwined himself with an angel.

Aziraphale looks for all the world like he is about to cry, but instead, his voice comes out spiked with venom.

"I should smite you myself, serpent," he whispers hotly.

The words sting, and in an instant Crowley is fumbling for his glasses, shoving them on his face, akimbo. The air between them burns electric, feels as heavy as the sky before a thunderstorm— ready to crack.

Crowley flattens back against the couch, takes a huge gulp of air, feels like he's drowning.

"I beg of you that you would. If the time ever came," Crowley whispers back. "I'd rather it be you. Do you have any idea what would happen to me? If they found out about us?"

Crowley's serpent tongue can pick up the slightest hint of salt in the air, of ozone, of ocean. It takes a moment for him to realize that the angel's cheeks are _wet_.

"Aziraphale," he whispers.

Aziraphale brushes, exasperated, at his face.

"There is no _us, _Crowley."

"There's been an _us_ since Eden," he snaps back, tired of the angel's caginess, tired of the lies, exhausted by all this emotion. He remembers the soldier in the field and thinks desperately of his wife at home, and for the first time in his nearly six-thousand year immortal life he feels like time is running out.

Crowley can see Aziraphale's jaw flexing, and then he is flicking the playing card in his hand across the room.

"I shouldn't have come here," Crowley mutters to himself.

"I thought you didn't know I was here?" Aziraphale turns and raises an incredulous eyebrow at him.

Crowley stares at him a for a long while, this soft animal in front of him, and wonders how it all got so complicated.

"I don't have others to fraternize with," he admits.

Something in Aziraphale's face softens.

"You're the only one, really."

Crowley looks down to the space between them. It feels like a hundred miles and oceans of time. The angel next to him might as well have been carved from marble for all he did not move for what felt like hours. Crowley can hear their syncopated breathing, a siren in the distance, the sporadic shelling of gunfire.

He needs to get out of here. He needs to go somewhere very far away and preferably in something that goes very fast— he knows that clever humans are getting better and better with automobile technology. Maybe he'll make an investment— some piece of machinery to fold himself inside.

And then, a compact, manicured hand comes into his peripheral vision and touches softly at the rim of his glasses, straightening them.

The invasion of personal space would be an affront to him were it anyone but Aziraphale. Aziraphale who mended his arm and clothed him, who shielded him from rain before they knew what rain even was; Aziraphale who was like the half of him that he had been missing.

"I didn't mean it," Crowley begins, hand spread out on the couch between them, bridging the gap between them.

"Mean what?"

"When I said I didn't need you."

Crowley knows Aziraphale's face by heart, can replay all of their moments together from memory. And not once has he seen this emotion— a tired fear, or sundered anxiety, something resigned and unbidden carving out strange lines on his ageless face. Like he knows a secret he desperately wants to tell.

Aziraphale looks down at Crowley's hand between them and for an instant his palm lifts as if to reach out. And then the movement is shuttered, closed down.

"I'm to cause a truce in Galicia on the Eastern Front in two months," Aziraphale looks across the room, as if to view the men sleeping outside of it, "it would be a pity to have to leave my work here to see to it."

Crowley nods slowly, "A miracle on the Eastern Front," he repeats, realization dawning.

"Yes. The Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies are to celebrate and break bread with one-another."

"Wait, two months? Russians… Oh, hell, it's Easter Sunday isn't it?"

Aziraphale sniffs.

"You don't have to—"

"—I'll do it," Crowley interrupts. "Always liked Easter. Jesus was a good kid."

"Is there any… thing for me to do? While you'll be gone?" Aziraphale turns his gaze up to meet Crowley's, the cloudless blue.

"Yes… I'm to… make the mud suction boots off soldier's feet. All of them. Might lead to some trench-foot outbreaks and shoe shortages. Could be a bit messy for you."

Aziraphale nods.

"I can do that."

The angel licks his lips, speaking slowly.

"And then after two months we should probably meet back up, discuss how things went."

Crowley blinks, swallows, nods.

"Should I come to you? Or you to me?" He asks, not meaning it how it sounds, his voice an encyclopedia of desperation.

"I will come to you. In Galicia. Maybe we can sample the food there," he pauses, swallows., "go out to lunch."

Crowley nods slowly, as if Aziraphale is a cornered animal ready to bolt.

"Okay. My treat."

The angel turns to him, and Crowley can see for the first time, beyond the walled off exterior, beyond the unfettered blue sky of his eyes, the tiny dark edge of loneliness.

"I suppose I should be going then," Crowley stands, brushes a hand down the front of his borrowed shirt.

"Keep it," Aziraphale says to the unvoiced question.

Crowley nods, takes the few paces to the door and then stoops, retrieving the playing card Aziraphale had sent soaring away earlier.

"You might need this," he says, placing it— the King of Hearts, he realizes— on the small coffee table. Aziraphale says nothing in response, but sips his drink and stares resolutely ahead. "For your magic tricks."

"Right then," Crowley begins, more to the empty room than to the now mute angel. "I—"

"Make sure you send that letter off to his wife."

Crowley taps his back pocket, finds the cigarettes and the letter still folded there.

"I will."

Aziraphale stares down at the card on the table in front of him in resolute silence, his face unreadable.

"Goodnight, angel."

"Good night, Crowley."

* * *

Crowley walks down the darkened hallway, cigarette already in his mouth, the yellow safety lights throwing chiaroscuro tiger stripes on his white shirt. He turns the corner toward the exit, snaps his fingers, and clothes himself in black. He can hear artillery rumbling in the distance, gunfire starting already at this early hour, can smell snow and blood on the air drifting in. Fifty years of sleep and he is still so tired, but he has work to do now, something to prove.

_It's a long ride to Spain, _he thinks, exhaling smoke into the darkness, stepping out onto the battlefield, feeling new.


End file.
